6/24/17 A fairly spontaneous trip to the Bridge to Nowhere trail made for a great adventure. Only my second time on this trail and the first for my Dad. There was significantly more water than last time I was here, which meant plenty of fun water crossings.
1 The river actually looks like a river for the first time in quite a while.
2 Almost Sierra-esque scenery.
3 We had something like 10 water crossings for the day. Some of them were in fairly swift current and at least knee deep. This is definitely the best part of the trail!
4 More beautiful river scenery.
5 Another crossing. We're probably nowhere near the "real" trail at this point, but the wandering and water crossings are a lot more fun!
6 Not bad for SoCal.
7 I can see why this is such a popular trail. Now if only they would get rid of the bungee jumpers...
8 Dad taking in the river view.
9 And Dad's picture of me taking in the view.
10 Another crossing.
11 Dad's picture of me crossing.
12 At this point, we got off trail again. I'm pretty sure I made the exact same mistake last time I was here and had to navigate through this same forest of Yucca.
13 Our detour included some sketchy "trail".
14 And a little bit of exposure.
15 And some additional water crossings.
16 Here's a video of one such crossing.
17 And yet another crossing. I think the "real" trail has only three crossings each way. How boring.
18 Who would want to pass this up?
19 Because of all our wandering, we didn't end-up with enough time to make it to the Bridge. But we definitely got to enjoy the best of the trail before it starts climbing out of the canyon. So we decided on an abitrary turnaround point and headed back. We'll have to do the Bridge some other day.
20 A quick lunch on the way back.
21 Top notch single track and fortuntately not too crowded today.
22 Almost back to Heaton Flats.
23 We came across a cute little tarantula.
24 A good example of where it's easy to go awry on the trail. The trail looks like it crosses the river and picks up on the other side, and many people do end-up going that way. But the "real" trail actually goes up and over the rocks on the right.
25 One last water crossing.
26 Giant Yucca in bloom. And the end to another fun day in the San Gabriels.